Last week we were invited by Toyota to Breckenridge, Colorado to test drive their 4-wheel drive vehicles over snow and ice covered trails, and to spend some time on the slopes with US Olympic snowboarder, X-Games sliver medalist and Team Toyota competitor, Elena Hight.

Sure she was the first woman to land a 900 in competition (doing it at a ridiculously young 13 years old) and is the first snowboarder ever, male or female, to land a double backside alley-oop rodeo in Superpipe competition, but the 23-year-old is also a hottie. So besides learning how to shred the mountain, we wanted to know what it takes to date an Olympian.

Here’s what Elena had to say about being manly, whether her success intimidates guys, and the worst line she ever heard:

1. What qualities do you look for in a guy? And be specific. If you like a guy who can deal with being second place to boarding, who has enough self-confidence to be okay with that, or an Alpha guy who will take control, or a guy who will treat you like a queen, say so.

Elena Hight: I don’t necessarily have a “type” of guy that I look for. I think that the most important qualities are a good sense of humor, intelligence, a passion for life, and someone who is comfortable and confident in their own skin.

2. How important is it to you that a guy be into snowboarding or skiing? Or surfing. Or is it better that he be into something totally different that he can introduce you to? And how important is it that he be fit and active?

EH: I definitely look for a guy who is active and into sports. I love to play outdoors, so anyone who is into some type of athletic sport is good for me. They don’t necessarily have to be the best snowboarder, but they have to be able to at least hang!

3. Do you find that guys are intimidated by your success? Does it make it harder or easier to meet guys when you’re an Olympic athlete? Does the constant travel help or hurt?

EH: Traveling is great to meet new guys or people in general, however not great to keep in contact with those people. But it is really fun to be able to hang out and get to know all sorts of different guys with different backgrounds, which is nice because it’s easy to get stuck just knowing the same guys in the snowboard industry.

I am not sure that guys are necessarily intimidated by my success, but if they are, then they probably aren’t the guy for me.

4. What do you think makes a guy “manly”? Is it having no fear facing the toughest mountain runs? Knowing how to fix a car or build a deck? Protecting you from harm? Not being afraid to cry?

EH: Because I grew up in the mountains, I was constantly surrounded by manly mountain men. To me, being manly is being able to take care of others. Whether it is fixing a car or bike or snowmobile, building a fire, shoveling the driveway, or building a tent, taking charge of a situation is manly.

5. What’s the worst line any guy has ever tried to use? The absolute dumbest thing a guy ever said or did? What was your reaction?

EH: Maybe, “Can I have your phone number because I lost mine?” That is just so lame!

And what was the sweetest/funniest/best line or thing a guy ever did to try to meet you? And did it work?

EH: Flowers are the way to a girl’s heart, and it will work every time.

Eric Rogell is the author of The Art of War for Dating and the is founder of The Casanova Code, a program where he teaches sales teams, corporate executives, and marketers how to achieve unrivaled business success by using the wickedly effective secrets of seduction. You can follow him on Twitter @ericrogell.

You see this hot girl waiting for her order at the coffee shop. Feeling confident, you walk up and say, “Hi, I’m Mike. I just wanted to…” And that’s all you can get out before she grabs her double skinny decaf soy latte, says “I have a boyfriend” and bolts for the door.

Shot down. In cold blood.

Now most guys will take it personally when that happens. But you shouldn’t. Because 9 times out of 10, you weren’t the reason she blew you off. And by “you” I mean your looks, your personality, your clothes… anything that makes you “you.” Nope, instead you just fell victim to one of the most insidious traps a guy can fall into: The Panhandler Syndrome.

Here’s how it works: Think about the last time you were in a big city and got approached by a panhandler. Some guy shuffles up, hand out. “Excuse me, sir. I haven’t eaten today, can you spare some change?” Being a generous guy, you reach into your pocket and hand him whatever coins you have. No big deal. Good deed done for the day.

Now imagine that every time you walk down your city’s streets, 10 or 15 panhandlers approach you. All with the same come-on: “Excuse me sir…”, “Pardon me, friend….”, “Hey mister, can you spare…”. By the time the 5th or 6th one approached you how willing would you be to dig in your pockets for change? Exactly. Not at all.

In fact, after just a couple of these bums hit you up for money, you’d start to ignore them, maybe even snap “I don’t have any change!” before they can even finish the word “Excuse.” And it doesn’t matter how compassionate and caring a person you are, at some point we’ve all had enough.

Now imagine you’re a hot girl. And all day, every day, guys are coming up to you. Hitting on you. Just trying to talk to you. All using the same dumb lines… “Wow has anyone ever told you…”, “Excuse me, but I just wanted to…”, “Hi, my name is Mike and…”

Yep. We are panhandlers to women. Begging for phone numbers. Dates. And sex. A never-ending stream of us, all using some version of the same old lines. And by the 3rd or 4th guy, they’re blowing us off like we were Charlie Sheen in a convent.

It’s not their fault either. They can’t help it. The Panhandler Syndrome becomes reflex—a knee jerk reaction to an endless parade of jerks. Even if you might be a great guy for her, she’s got her bitch shield on high alert, and she’s shooting down any fool who trips the wire. And unless your name is Channing Tatum, you’re gonna trip the wire.

So what can you do?

You’ve got to avoid the triggers that set off the Panhandler Syndrome. Let’s go back to the city streets for an example. Forget all those guys shuffling up with a sad, “Excuse me.” Think about the creative panhandlers you’ve seen. The ones with the signs that say things like: “Yell anything you want at me for $2″ or “I’ll listen to you complain about your wife/husband for $3″ Did those catch your attention? Make you stop? Laugh? Even consider giving the guy a couple of bucks just for the effort?

Exactly. Because they didn’t come up with a line that triggers your reaction to avoid their insufferable neediness. And you have to think the same way when approaching a woman. This is why indirect openers can let you side step her triggers, rather than coming in directly.

You want to come across as if you’re not hitting on her at all. As if you’re simply asking a question or an opinion. “Is that chai? I’ve heard for every 3 cups you drink, you add a week on to your life. What do you think, is it really that healthy?” or “You look like a coffee veteran… Help me settle a bet with my buddy, I say a latte and a cappuccino are the same thing, he says they’re different. Who wins?” It doesn’t really matter as long as whatever you ask is creative, different, and can’t be answered with a yes or no. Or doesn’t make her think you’re angling to get in her pants. That comes later, after you’ve made yourself immune to the Panhandler Syndrome.

Eric Rogell is the author of “The Art of War for Dating” and is the founder of The Casanova Code, a program where he teaches sales teams, corporate executives and marketers how to achieve unrivaled business success by using the wickedly effective secrets of seduction. You can follow him on Twitter @ericrogell.

This is the million-dollar question that drives many men crazy. If you want to do better with your dating life, you need to start trying to understand women better.

First, start paying attention! Women will give you all sorts of subtle signals and you just have to pick up on them.

Next, start doing some reading and getting advice from guys who have studied this. The pickup artists we recommend know what they’re doing, and you can learn a ton about women and the mistakes you been making by reading up on their advice.

Dan Bacon has a helpful overview on what women want, so check it and and see the importance of how women want to feel.

We all want to meet more women and date more, but none of this matters if we don’t know how to close the deal. Dan Bacon gives some helpful tips on hooking up and closing the deal. Things like initiating physical contact and maintaining eye contact are critical.

Touch her: Words are great, but the skin is the largest organ in the body and very responsive to sensual touch. Get sex by using any part of your body to rub or touch a woman’s skin.

It can be as simple as holding and caressing her hand, to using your leg to rub her dress against her skin, or even a casual touch of your hand against her face. This will help get a girl to have sex with you.

Maintain good eye contact: Guys often use eye contact when approaching women, but they tend to ignore or underestimate its ability on revving up a woman’s libido.

The next time you are talking to a girl and wondering how to get sex from her, simply tell her she is the sexiest woman in the room, while gazing directly into her eyes. Don’t be surprised if she starts to make out with you in public minutes later.

This is what it’s really about. We don’t want to date women for the sake of dating. We want to seduce women and enjoy their attraction to us.

If you want to improve your success with women, learning the art of seduction is critical. Dan Bacon gives his perspective on how to seduce a woman where he focuses on avoiding the friend zone. Check it out.

Guys think they need to impress women, but they often try way too hard. Here’s Dan Bacon’s take on how to impress a woman:

The key to impressing a woman is to impress her without trying to impress her. If you are trying to impress women in the hope of being chosen, then you are doing it wrong.

Instead of trying to impress her, focus on being an impressive guy by being your real self during conversations, on dates and in life. Then, when you talk to a woman you find attractive, she will have more reason to want to escalate to kissing, sex and a relationship with you. However, if you’re an unimpressive guy who is afraid to be his real self when talking to her, she will have more reason to want to end the interaction as soon as possible.

Read the whole article and start learning how to work on your inner game.

Many guys have a very hard time reading signs from women. This applies to all sorts of things, as women aren’t as direct as men, but learning how to read when a woman likes you is critical to being successful in dating.

Ok – the photo above may be a little misleading, but anything is possible if you try – right?

Juggling more than one women can be very satisfying, and it can create a lot of problems if you mess it up. Dan Bacon addresses the topic of dating multiple women and has some very helpful, common sense tips. Here’s one:

If you are in a committed relationship with one woman, you will usually talk with or see her a few times a week. However, if you’re dating multiple women, you want to make sure that several days to a week go by between phone calls and dates. Additionally, after you’ve had sex with a new woman, you should stop calling her, texting her and Facebooking her. Let her be the one who calls, texts and sends Facebook messages. Then, only answer your phone calls from her sometimes and take your time to reply to texts and Facebook messages; sometimes immediately, sometimes an hour or two later and sometimes the next day. If you’re always calling her and texting her, she will assume you want to be her boyfriend, so just let her do all the chasing after sex has happened between you.

This is actually great advice for the time right after you meet a woman. Be careful about smothering her, and set it up so she’s chasing you a bit. We’ll get into cat-string theory another time, but you can guess what we’re talking about. Keeping a woman guessing a bit will always help you out.

This isn’t surprising, as many men have trouble with this. They get nervous or intimidated, and so they avoid the possibility of rejection.

So you need to learn to change your attitude. Just as important, however, is learning how to approach women. There are all sorts of great pickup artists who can help with that. Their approaches vary so you need to do research and find one that fits your personality, yet at the same time you have to be willing to challenge yourself, otherwise you won’t get better at this. Check out our pickup artist web guide for examples.

Dan Bacon’s article has some easy advice on approaching women in coffee shops. Other stress learning how to talk to women and not hitting on them as soon as you approach them. Read up and you’ll see right away many ways you can improve.

If you’re having trouble with dating and relationships, this is a question you should ask yourself. How you perceive yourself has a lot to do with how women will perceive you. Women love confident men, and they definitely can spot a lack of confidence.

So before you think about some of the tools discussed by pickup artists, you have to take a hard look at yourself and go into this with the right attitude, which some pickup artists call “inner game.”

Millions of modern men are now learning how to be an alpha male. One of the main reasons why men are rushing to become an alpha male is that women have become a lot more confident, independent and assertive and modern men are finding themselves feeling nervous and unsure around these women.

The truth is, when you display alpha male traits you will get all the love, sex and affection from women that you handle. Why? You will be one of the very RARE men who is able to remain calm, confident and in control around the new, savvy modern woman.

Check out his 5 tips, including a discussion on the difference between an Alpha male vs an Omega male. Then check out our Dating Tips page for more great advice.